ey again are much more 'likeable' (to use Lady
Queensberry's word) than the colourless Edward Ferrars and the
stiff-jointed Colonel Brandon. Yet it might not unfairly be contended
that there is more fidelity to what Mr. Thomas Hardy has termed
'life's little ironies' in Miss Austen's disposal of the two Miss
Dashwoods than there is in her disposal of the heroines of _Pride and
Prejudice_. Every one does not get a Bingley, or a Darcy (with a
park); but a good many sensible girls like Elinor pair off contentedly
with poor creatures like Edward Ferrars, while not a few enthusiasts
like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel
waistcoats. George Eliot, we fancy, would have held that the fates of
Elinor and Marianne were more probable than the fortunes of Jane and
Eliza Bennet. That, of the remaining characters, there is certainly
none to rival Mr. Bennet, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or the
ineffable Mr. Collins, of _Pride and Prejudice_, is true; but we
confess to a kindness for vulgar matchmaking Mrs. Jennings with her
still-room 'parmaceti for an inward bruise' in the shape of a glass of
old Constantia; and for the diluted Squire Western, Sir John
Middleton, whose horror of being alone carries him to the point of
rejoicing in the acquisition of _two_ to the population of London.
Excellent again are Mr. Palmer and his wife; excellent, in their
sordid veracity, the self-seeking figures of the Miss Steeles. But the
pearls of the book must be allowed to be that egregious amateur in
toothpick-cases, Mr. Robert Ferrars (with his excursus in chapter
xxxvi. on life in a cottage), and the admirably-matched Mr. and Mrs.
John Dashwood. Miss Austen herself has never done anything better than
the inimitable and oft-quoted chapter wherein is debated between the
last-named pair the momentous matter of the amount to be devoted to
Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters; while the suggestion in chapters
xxxiii. and xxxiv. that the owner of Norland was once within some
thousands of having to sell out at a loss, deserves to be remembered
with that other memorable escape of Sir Roger de Coverley's ancestor,
who was only not killed in the civil wars because 'he was sent out of
the field upon a private message, the day before the battle of
Worcester.'

Of local colouring there is as little in _Sense and Sensibility_ as in
_Pride and Prejudice_. It is not unlikely that some memories of
Steventon may survive in Norland; and it m